Live Like You're Dying
by SlvrSoleAlchmst1
Summary: Somewhere in her haze of yearning, Hal had allowed Mello to become the one who dealt the cards. He’d handed her the Joker. The wild card. The card that sent her stumbling into a battle she couldn’t win, and yet something in Hal relished it.


_A/N: This is kind of new for me. _

_And that is such an understatement._

_If you know me well, you might quirk an eyebrow when you read it. But believe me, I know it reads like it needs work no matter _who's _giving it a shot. I'd be interested to hear honest opinions about what people thought of this attempt._

His hands were sliding down the sides of her hips, his mouth at work against her collarbone, and oh, _god_, Hal suspected Mello wasn't in his right mind_._ This had to be some sort of snap test, some sort of hungry physical attack to see where her loyalties lied — with him or with Near. What was she supposed to be proving, when she fisted his vest at the shoulders and released a sigh? It wasn't fair. Hal couldn't _focus_, because Mello was rendering her mind worthless with his greedy suckling and nipping. There was no way this hot, wet path being licked up to her ear was meant to make her think; it couldn't be. He wasn't testing her. This was more like a loss of control, a dive from reconnaissance to the front lines, where sense blurred with _sensation_ and all a soul could do was follow instincts and pray.

Hal was far from considering a Hail Mary.

"Mello," she gasped, twisting under his gloved leather grip and letting out a tiny moan when he only tugged her closer. Their hips collided roughly. She felt him smirk against the skin on her neck as he pressed himself into the crotch of her trousers. It was a boast of his power.

"You've got what you wanted now, Hal."

But Hal wasn't stupid. Even as his swift hands unbuttoned her shirt and she leaned back against the wall for support, Hal knew she wasn't the only one that had taken an unadulterated leap upon letting this scene play out. _Mello _had started this, not her. Shit, she should have just _shot_ him.

"I think you wanted this more than I did, Mello." It was murmured carefully, but as if Mello sensed her second of defiance, he kicked her gun farther away across the floor. His hands were skimming the inside of her blouse now, and Hal bit her lip to give herself a moment of coherent thought. When had it gone from perilous to provocative?

Mello looked at her, clear, piercing eyes shining from underneath those golden bangs, and his smirk was the picture of dominance and mockery. Hal saw her own desire reflected back at her in his black pupils, but she couldn't muster the will to curse herself for appearing needy. Mello made her feel _wanted_. She took in his triumphant stare and relished the way those soft leather gloves slipped beneath the waistband of her pants.

"_You_ wanted it just as badly, Hal. Don't deny yourself the sweet submission of this moment." His lips moved to her exposed chest, and she tangled her fingers in his fine hair, pressing him against her harder.

Falling, falling, falling into a realm where lines were blurred and Hal didn't even know what she was fighting for. To bring Kira down? But how? Near's way, cold logic and plans from a distance? Or Mello's, slick and immediate and dangerous? Should she give up and let Kira live? Hal had wanted to do_ something_, but when she'd found herself juggling the ideals of too many different players at once… she'd lost sight of her purpose. Mello steered her to the bed, and when her stomach tingled in anticipation, Hal decided that this direction was as good as any. Had she been focusing, perhaps she would have stopped herself, but Mello was making her react with an urgency that suggested there was a clock counting down somewhere. She had to _move_. She would hold onto this — this strange and blasphemous intimacy with an almost-stranger.

Somewhere in her haze of increased yearning, Hal had allowed Mello to become the one who dealt the cards. He'd handed her the Joker. The wild card. The card that sent her stumbling into a battle she couldn't win, and yet something in Hal relished it.

Perhaps all she'd wanted was to be conquered for once, entirely, and thereby set free of responsibility. Or perhaps she craved excitement. A break from protocol.

Mello was on the bed above her now, removing one glove with his teeth and unzipping his vest with the other hand. Hal watched him move, eyes half-lidded and breath coming quickly.

"Let me take this from you, Hal," Mello commanded, leaving her no room for protest. "Let me teach you what it means to live every day like you're dying. You need to wake up. You're not a puppet. Feel this, and know that."

Oh, Hal wanted this. Mello didn't have to convince her. No more sealed conference rooms, no more tightened security precautions or tricky moves from behind seven different firewalls; no more sterile, massive-scale rooms of glass and stainless steel furniture, no more suited men and standard issue weapons. This was _Mello_, and they were in a low-grade motel room where she'd met him to exchange information. The door was unlocked; the bed creaked when she arched her back into the touch of his spidery fingers on the swell of her breasts. He was in sweaty leather and chains, and his rosary was hanging down to tickle her stomach. His pants had five rows of X-ed laces and his gun was on the bedside table, gleaming and grotesque in its overdone design. He'd put it there after grabbing her by the chin and prying her jaw apart to kiss her, like they both were drowning and CPR had suddenly become a highly involved, partner effort.

Mello could make her writhe without even _trying_.

He snickered against the flesh of her navel, kissing and biting his way lower, and lower still, to where her pants lay unzipped courtesy of his nimble fingers. Hard and then soft with that mouth of his, rough and then gentle, sending darts and bolts of desire through every synapse in the skin where he caressed her. Fire, flames, inferno.

And both of them were descending together.

"We… we're going to wish we hadn't let this happen," Hal struggled, while her ravaging mafia god scraped fingers up the inside of her thigh. Lightning bolts of ecstasy followed the path, over the material that still bunched between her body and his touch, to where pleasure pooled between her legs.

"Hal," Mello groaned, and she let out a cry to feel him tug her panties down a few inches. He kissed her downy flesh with relish. "Don't kid yourself. Every fiber of our existence says that we're going to regret this, but it just won't happen, will it?"

Hal's hands found the headboard when his mouth came back up to lick one of her pert nipples and his thigh nudged her legs farther apart. "H-How did we let this happen?" she asked. "At a time like this, when Near is—"

"Damn it, Hal, don't bring up Near." Mello slid his expert fingers between her legs and rubbed in a tempting little circle. Suddenly she couldn't form words to retaliate. "I want you. I want you badly enough to be doing this against my better judgment, and you're exactly the same as I am. Don't you dare bring up that bastard who thinks he's better than me." He found the wet place where she ached for his fingers to explore, and he slipped one inside.

Hal threw her head back and his name left her lips, low and wanton, every chord it struck the sound of a woman on the edge of destiny. This was going to change her. Mello was going to craft her into something real, someone with opinions — with dreams and hopes. He was going to do it by _conquering_ her, by forcing her to give in to what she'd always wanted and then teaching her to take it for herself. Mello had injected her with desires. Welling, searing, unquenchable desires that piloted her now, even in the face of notebooks and mass chaos and an L Lawliet that lay dead under six feet of packed earth. She didn't _care_, Christ she didn't care about any of it, because Mello was pumping that one finger in and out, maddeningly slowly, torturously tantalizing, and Hal knew that somehow the world had lost its meaning. She would collapse with it, into the mire of living one day at a time as best she could, just like Mello. Because what the hell were they fighting for in the long term? It didn't seem possible that they could _win_.

They _were_ alike. Hal just hadn't had an outlet to release the craven beast inside her. The creature that longed to simply _live_, or go down fighting and take everyone that tried to thwart her down to Hell at her side. She'd simply needed someone stronger to show her the way.

Mello undid the laces at his crotch with his free hand, and Hal tingled to see him do it. He put a second finger inside her and began to scissor back and forth, watching her for a reaction with his sharp eyes glazed. Mello burned as badly as she did. But why? Why was he showing her the path back to her independence?

"Why?" Hal panted, bucking into his hand for more contact when he pulled out, twisting beneath his touch while her knuckles turned white from her grip on the headboard. "Why are you— ah!" He let his fingers plunge back in to explore deeper. _Why are you here with me instead of chasing Kira for L's revenge? _"Have you given up on what you came here to find out from me?" It was almost funny, to talk of their exchange of information when his hand was growing sticky and wet from her desperate craving of him.

"You wouldn't understand, Hal," Mello said. He withdrew his slick fingers, tore off her trousers and her underwear at last, and bent his head to kiss the inside of her thigh. "I haven't given up on anything. This is everything to me, and I'm nothing if I let this die. I don't care if I have to go down to achieve what I want. And this with you… is just another thread that I'm letting myself follow." His next words were an impatient growl. "Let me have this; I'll get my information later." But there was something in his gaze that belied his confident response as his hand trailed up her leg.

Hal turned her head on the pillow, to close her eyes and fight the waves of lust that took her at the sight of Mello's lips so near her festering ache of passion. "You lost part of yourself somewhere, Mello," she breathed, burning something chemical as she felt him lick along the crease between her hip and her upper leg. "You took this game too far, and now you're stuck, and you're not sure it was a good idea but you couldn't give a damn and you're going to follow it anyway, and make excuses for your recklessness and keep going because you want to find someone who won't create the same disaster you did." The accusation was a tumble of rushed words, and shit, Hal hardly knew what she was saying. Her core was rocking, rippling, screaming for the wild degeneracy that was Mello, Mello, _Mello_.

His blond hair caressed her inner thighs as he dipped his head to take her in his mouth. He said nothing, but his motions were punishment now. He would bring her satisfaction, but only after drawing out her release, scolding her for exposing his demons. Hal's knees trembled when Mello's tongue clove down inside; the muscles in her body tensed like metal wires and her hands flew to his hair to hold him still, but he didn't relent. He scraped lightly with his teeth, dipped deep and bold into a part of her that he had no right to taste, and she let him. She let that tongue curl up and under, sliding in and out, and she let him suck and kiss before she had to pull him up in earnest. No, _no_, she couldn't _take_ it, couldn't take his teasing and his daring and his plan to leave her pleading for release. She was no plaything. She was no toy.

He was watching her with bated breath.

Hal returned his gaze, lips parted with want.

Mello fixed her with a smirk of conquering glory, licking his own lips before shifting back up on the bed and bending down to whisper in her ear. "Does this mean you want me to take you now, Hal Lidner?"

To rise from the ashes, first one had to burn. If it hadn't been for Mello, Hal would have eventually hit bottom herself, lost in her own quagmire of questions and failed visions. She'd rather let Mello — a reckless pagan god, or perhaps a demon of degeneracy — aid her in her suicidal plunge.

Hal Lidner was going to be born again, as a woman with foresight and her own idea of what vitality meant.

Mello teased her opening with his fingers again, waiting for her reply. She let him kiss her on the mouth, harder than he had before, let him gnaw on her lower lip and swipe his tongue across her teeth to mingle with hers in a languid, wanton tangle. He pulled his hand away, waiting, still waiting for her response. Hunger laced his gaze; impatience urged him to straddle her and rub his hard length against her where her pleasure pooled, sliding partway down in a wave of sweet, sudden friction.

Hal moaned, and when Mello took the sound as consent, her hands were already on his hips, pressing down to help force him inside her quickly. Mello leaned over her with his arms on either side of her head, hair dangling down to brush her cheek, and she felt him shudder with ecstasy as he entered. He pulled out after a long second of remaining buried there, his only sound a low groan of desire. He tilted his hips and thrust in again, grazing a spot inside Hal that drew another helpless noise from within her. He shifted his weight to one elbow, ran a thumb over her breast and dipped to lick her other, beginning to pick up the pace as he rocked back and forth, in and out, terrorizing her pleasure sense until Hal felt she couldn't take it. It was Mello, _Mello_ moving inside her, in and out with a skillful sort of frenzy, eliciting long gasps and small cries that were begs for more. She spread her legs farther; he buried himself deeper. Her fingernails scraped red marks down his back.

She was going to lose her sense of self to this volatile, perilous man years younger than she, a former Wammy's child who was a genius in his own right — even if he _was_ only second to Near. She was going to break apart like soft putty in the hands of this _angel_ who was misguided and reckless and bent on his own destruction. She'd go down while he grunted and glided in and out of her — made her buck and cry out — and she'd be born again in his arms when they were through. And maybe then she'd know what it meant to live like the clock had already run out. Life had to count. She had to learn to provoke change.

"_Hal_, you're so wet…."

It was all because of him, really, but what did it matter that she couldn't find the words to tell him so? This was sweet, total seduction. This was friction that heated her basest, darkest desires, a physical clash of two people that only wanted to mean something in the grand scheme of life. To Hal, it was good.

"Ah— Mello!"

He pulled her upright, switched their positions faster than Hal could follow, him on the bottom now, sitting against the headboard, and her, impaled across his lap. His hands gripped her hips until she felt the threat of bruises. Her thighs clamped down over his, and she lifted herself up with muscle that she'd built over years of physical training. Hal was all hard lines and toned edges beneath her womanly frame, because she'd once thought that physical strength would help her protect herself. But now… she used her strength to ruin herself, to destroy her prior mentality and inject herself with everything that was new and different and _worth _what it was doing to her. Something meaningful was at last within Hal's grasp. She lifted herself off Mello with a shaky breath, enough to feel him leave her, slippery and hard and wet with her need for him, and his hands slid to her buttocks to help drive her back down. Again and again, Hal rose and fell, Mello leaning forward to kiss her neck even as he pumped up and into her, strained to meet her falling purity and send longing all the way to her core.

Somehow Hal knew that her crescendo was coming.

They went down again, Mello pushing forward until she was once more on her back, knocked flat but still taking him. Her legs clamped around his waist, the both of them with their heads now at the foot of the bed. He slammed into her, harder and faster when she begged him to move. He let out moans of his own, her name and rough curses in those low, seductive keys of his voice that had sent her into ripples of insanity long before they'd fallen into bed like this. "Fuck, Hal. Oh, _fuck, _this'll make me come so fucking _hard!_" In and out, thrusting harder, _harder_, but god it was never enough; Hal wanted Mello to tear her apart with his thick, rock-like member and open up her very soul. She wanted more, everything he would venture to give her. She was rising to the crest, cymbal clashes heightening as the tempo sped up and the volume peaked. He was cursing and she was releasing moans and cries that bubbled up from where their bodies collided, to paint her lips like sweetened poison. This shouldn't _be. _

And yet it was, and she was hot and wet and wanton with it.

Hal burst, feeling Mello's thigh muscles tighten as he sensed her release. He let himself go alongside her, riding out the conclusion of their union in three final strokes that made Hal cry out. Her nails bit into his back. His teeth bit into her shoulder.

It was hard to think for thirty seconds of earth-shattering white noise, and then Mello was tumbling down atop her, trailing kisses down her neck, down her chest, back up to her jaw line, their slick bodies entangled as the shaky moment of climax wore away and left them gasping.

She had died, and been reborn, and now Hal Lidner knew what it was to live, to make life worth living by seizing every second. It didn't matter. It felt like something cosmic. It didn't matter. _Nothing_ mattered, and that was precisely why everything had to. Every second of life counted, _had_ to count, or she'd only want to die again.

"I don't regret it," she panted, letting her fingers tangle in Mello's matted hair.

"Regret's not in your nature anymore, Hal," Mello said, taking her wrist and bringing it to his lips to kiss her pulse point gently, slowly, almost like a lover. "Regret is something a woman like you won't ever feel again."

— x —

When he died, Hal drove fifty miles per hour over the speed limit to reach the place where his body lay burning in the rubble. Her pulse was racing beyond its natural rate and her knuckles were white, so white on the steering wheel, the way they'd been the night they'd strained at the motel bed's headboard.

She pulled up to the flaming church in a spray of dirt from the tires and stepped out, her engine left idling. She felt the heat and she burned, _burned_ beside the fire that consumed the old wood and made the stone collapse, eating away at the corpse she knew was still inside.

Mello was gone. He had lived every day like he was dying, and he'd finally met his match — in the death he'd always foreseen. He blazed out now, leaving behind the world that he had loved and hated with every fiber in him.

Hal Lidner felt no regret.

She noted the fire trucks and the policemen, the flashing car lights and the hollering voices. She got back into her car. There was no room for regret inside her soul, because Mello had broken that soul what felt like ages ago. Mello had sewn it back up in a different pattern, had recreated Hal until she was supported by something far stronger than her old marionette strings.

Mello had left his mark, but that mark did not bleed.

Hal drove away with the flames at her back, facing the present, because maybe she was next. Maybe she was already dying. Nothing for it but to keep on going, and make her next moment count. Because Mello had been right.

He'd never lied to her — not that night, not ever. He hadn't disillusioned her with the belief that she would emerge a hump of emotionless rock if it all were to end. Even Mello was human, and he'd known it. He'd been the most wretched of them all, when it came to the things he felt. Emotions used to drive him.

Now he couldn't feel anything.

Hal gunned it down the highway back to headquarters, breeching one twenty while the painted lines blurred in her rearview.

Mello had never, never told her that anything worth dying for was easy.


End file.
